Advanced JavaServer Pages

The basics of JSP are easy to learn for anyone familiar with HTML and Java but it is difficult to learn the many advanced features. This book covers the complexities of JSP very well and helps to make them simple and easy to understand. The book starts with coverage of JSP custom tags, one of the most important features of JSP. HTML forms and JSP templates are covered next. The section on templates is extremely useful for those who wish to use pluggable components to build web sites. The best part of the book for me were the middle chapters which cover designing a Model 2 framework using servlets and JSP. The framework is generic and can be applied to any web site development effort. He then demonstrates how event handling can be used within the framework to provide internationalization, authentication, and form resubmission trapping. (Have your users ever created additional profiles by using the back button?) The next chapter demonstrates using custom tags to access databases. The author then shows different ways to process XML with JSP. The final chapter is a case study demonstrating all the techniques used throughout the book. Code samples are found throughout the book and I had no trouble getting any of them to run in Tomcat. The tag libraries are provided as open source by the author and will be helpful for most developers. The book is very well written and will be useful for anyone interested in advancing their knowledge of JSP.

David Geary has written an excellent book on developing JSP websites with "modern" techniques. It explores the areas of JSP that are diverging from traditional web scripting environments: trends such as tag libraries and model 2 architecture (even providing an entire chapter devoted to developing a model 2 based framework, a perfect way to learn the concepts behind frameworks like Struts). For those that want to develop large scale, maintainable web systems with J2EE and/or JSP, this is the book to reach for.

I have several books on servlets and JSP, and while some of them are quite good (I would recommend Core Servlets and JSP or Web Development with JSP), none of them cover the advanced aspects of JSP that Geary's book does.Geary starts with two excellent chapters on implementing custom tags, which includes a clear explanation of how body tags work, which was something I didn't really understand before reading this book. From there, Geary shows best practices for handling forms, implementing templates and the Model 2 architecture, event handling, internationalization, security, interacting with databases, and XML. The book concludes with a comprehensive case study that uses most of the concepts previously discussed in the book.The best thing about this book, however, is that it shows you how to apply a number of design patterns discussed in the GOF book for servlets and JSPs. Those design patterns allow you to implement robust Web sites that are easy to maintain and modify. For example, Geary shows how to use the façade design pattern to handle forms and the memento pattern to retain form values. In what is arguably the most interesting chapter in the book (Templates) Geary shows how to use the Composite and Strategy design patterns to implement templates. Templates let you construct web sites with pluggable components, which makes those sites much easier to implement and, more importantly, modify. I have not seen templates covered in any other JSP book.Finally, Geary's book is extremely well written -- it's authoritative and easy to read, contains a great deal of information that you won't find elsewhere, and unlike most technical books, does not contain a bunch of fluff. You won't find rambling discussions of things you already know, useless appendices that repeat what you can easily find in the javadocs, or long code listings that could be much shorter. Every page in Geary's book is packed with useful information that's presented clearly in a logical progression.

Advanced JSP is an incredibly useful book; it provides the essential design framework for implementing real-world JSP applications. Geary outlines three critical JSP architecture patterns: (1) a template-driven approach for structuring web page layouts; (2) a Model-View- Controller (MVC) framework to separate presentation and business logic; and (3) a custom-tag based pattern for controlling database access. The text and the examples are clearly written and illustrated; in explaining each concept, Geary starts with a straightforward example, and then effectively builds additional sophistication upon it. As a project manager with my first JSP assignment, this book provided the key design principles. When I shared the book with my Java development team, they were even more enthusiastic; they shared the book with two other development teams who are going to incorporate his ideas. One senior Java developer indicated that if he had implemented Geary's framework on his previous JSP project, they could have written a much more robust application with 75% less code. Geary's design patterns take care of most of the application infrastructure; it will allow my development team to focus on coding business-specific components -- and not on the underlying "plumbing".

I've looked through probably every book under the sun (no pun intended) pertaining to the subject of JSP, and while there are some good things in many of them, I can't think of one that has as much useful information between the covers as Geary's book does. Unlike most of the books on the subject that describe what JSP can do, Geary's book is a thoughtful exposition of how best to do it. His central theme is the use of custom tags to manage the complexity of JSP applications. His first 2 chapters describe how custom tags are built and used in web pages. But for my money, it is the 4 chapters following these that are the real highlight of the book, the ones dealing with HTML Forms, Templates, and the Model 2 Framework. These chapters provide really useful information for the architectural design of web sites using JSP technology. I found Geary's explanation of these subjects to be clear, concise, and complete - something I can't say about Sun's Blueprint book.Finally, it was refreshing NOT to find the 'obligatory' appendixes with the entire Servlet and JSP APi at the end of Geary's book. Instead, there is just one lone appendix dealing with the subject of Servlet filters.